Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  or men down there all the time, to keep the place immaculate. But .. . these are not normal times! And I must man the gantlets.’

  Slowly but surely, Wratha was growing angry. Now that the shock — the fact of her condition was known to her beyond any further doubt — she could begin to react to it.

  This Gorvi . .. ah, what a great liar! Every two to three hours? But Lord Lichloathe had been suffering for — oh, a good three-month since first he began to wrap himself in rags! Three months! The stack must be steeped in plague! Wratha’s reaction, typical of her leech, was beginning to make itself plain in her face, form and voice as she hissed: ‘How is it then that I seem to recall, and not so very long ago, advising you to watch your wells most diligently? Did I not say that, given half a chance, our enemies would poison the wells with kneblasch? Well, and it appears I was wrong - for they have poisoned them with the body of a dead leper!’ Her voice had risen to a shrill of impotent fury. Or perhaps not impotent, for Gorvi was here within arm’s reach.

  The Guile would answer, but couldn’t seem to find the right words. They were all against him: Spiro with his deadly killing eye, the rabid Canker, Wran with his rage mounting in him even now, and Wratha, whose own furies made strong men whimper!

  ‘Gorvi the Guileless!’ that Lady stormed, grown very tall and thin (the young girl quite disappeared now), with her skin wrinkled and crimson eyes bulging hideously. ‘And are you also gutless? I seem to remember the necromacer Nestor Lichloathe calling you that upon a time. Are you so weak you can’t admit the truth, even when it is known to everyone around you? Gorvi, you … have . .. neglected .. . your … wells! In these most difficult of times, you may well have poisoned us all!’

  ‘Including myself?’ he panted, backed up against the wall as they turned on him in a body. ‘Is it likely? Think what you are saying, Wratha! Think, all of you! Would I knowingly — or even negligently — allow the wells to be poisoned

  — and then bring it to your attention? And did Wran and Spiro bomb their own gas-beasts, too? But isn’t it obvious: we are all the victims of some weird warfare!’

  And this time the truth was obvious. Wran saw it at once, and however reluctantly said, ‘He’s right. The pens and chambers might possibly have been an accident - only just possibly - but the landing-bay? There was no gas in the landing-bay!’

  But Wratha snarled, ‘A moment ago, Gorvi would have given you the blame in order to lessen his own neglect!’

  And Canker shook his head and growled, ‘We are at war

  — indeed, besieged - yet here you stand bickering among yourselves! Hah, and you dare to call me mad! Well, make up your minds and decide what, if anything, is to be done, and then let me know! Meanwhile, I’m through wasting my time here. My instrument of bones is finished, perfected at last, and I want to try it out before sunup.’ He shook his head again, worriedly, slapped ineffectively at his ear, whined his frustration (his pain?) and headed for the exit.

  Spiro Killglance followed him, snarling, ‘Extra vigilance! Who or whatever’s to blame for these affairs, we must catch him out and punish him! Give him to me, to blast with my eye!’

  ‘Vigilance with regard to this … this pestilence, too!’ Wratha was quick to call after them. ‘Look for the signs, and if you so much as suspect leprosy .. .’ But deep inside she shuddered.

  Wran pointed his finger straight at Gorvi’s nose and said, ‘Gorvi, this isn’t finished. You have been saved by circumstances alone: the fact that Madmanse has likewise suffered a weird and inexplicable attack. But how can there be any excuse for a leprous body in the wells? So be advised: that when this bloodwar is over, however it goes, my war and yours begins. You and I shall see it out together - on Sunside!’

  Wran left, and Gorvi stood alone with a furious Wratha. To her, he said, ‘Lady, I am not at fault!’

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  And in all honesty, despite her rage, she couldn’t see how he could be. Calming herself a little, and shrinking back to a girl, she said, ‘Is it possible that this body has been there a long time? Might it have got stuck under a ledge, out of sight, only recently floating into view?’

  ‘Wratha.’ He flapped his hands. ‘I have swimmers! They are fit and well even now! That corpse was put there, deliberately and recently, within the last three hours.’

  And: Nestor! she thought again. But how could he fit into this? And anyway, she wasn’t even sure that he was … a leper. But she knew who would be sure. Except, how could she inquire of the dog-Lord without explaining her suspicions? If Canker Canison had wanted to say something, he’d have said it by now. But no, he’d left this place in short order, eager to be out of it. He was loyal as a pup, that one — to Nestor.

  So … why not ask Nestor himself, direct? And if he said yes, then kill the bastard!

  Gorvi broke into her thoughts. ‘Wran intends to kill me!’

  ‘He rages,’ she answered, ‘as is his wont. We all rage, as if someone had planned it. So maybe you’re right, Gorvi, and an alien force is at work. Anyway, let’s leave it at that for now. It’s all we can do. But from now on, no more errors!’

  ‘I swear I’m not to blame!’ he called after her, as she in turn left…

  A little later, Canker played moon music. Nestor (who was not in his bed and had not intended to be) heard him, took a flyer and went down to the north-facing wall of Mange-manse, where it was pitted into great bays and windows, like the bones of some ancient skull or toothless jaw. Since it was not his intention to land, he caused his mount to form air-trap wings and, hovering on a wind rising in the north, he gazed on Canker across a gulf of air, where the dog-Lord worked his baffles to make the bones of monsters sound and fill the aerie with his ‘music’.

  As always, it was a cacophony; there might be something

  of a tune in it, though far more a dirge than the original Szgany love song. And Nestor thought: I gave him this tune. Why is it the Wamphyri murder everything? There was nothing of humour in his inwards-directed question.

  In a little while Canker saw him, and sent: Well, and do I make progress? His thoughts had been morose; they brightened a very little at sight of Nestor.

  For as long as the necromancer could remember, the dog-Lord had been his one friend, the only creature he could truly trust. Indeed, Canker had been far more friend to him than he to Canker. For on occasion, Nestor had considered a time when Canker would play the part of a mere lieutenant - to himself. But that was all in the past now. There would be no such time; no future at all, not for Nestor Lichloathe. Anyway, he would not hurt the dog-Lord now, not by word or deed.

  Your music is excellent, he answered. With a talent such as yours, no wonder you’ve called maidens down from the moon/ Except…

  Aye?

  I didn’t come to listen to your music. If so, I could do it from a window in Suckscar.

  Canker nodded, continued to work his baffles, create his awesome noise. I know why you came: because you could not come down into Guilesump. I/ they’d seen you there … it might all connect.

  As you have connected it?

  Guilesump, no. But the rest? It wasn’t hard. I pity you, my friend. And I have wept: that we can no more run on Sunside together, like foxes among the chickens.’ Well — (He shrugged, and for a moment his music was sourer still) - it was all coming to an end, anyway.

  Oh?

  Again Canker’s nod. I scry the future in dreams, Nestor, as well you know. And for us … there is no future.

  For us? You and I?

  The Wamphyri! Canker barked. It’s finished, all of it.

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  How soon?

  Soon.

  Myself?

  Nothing specific. Don’t ask, for you can’t change it. Anyway, I’m not always right.

  You’ll tell me nothing more?

  About the future, no. His music soared and the aerie shuddered. The very air seemed to vibrate; dust came trembling from the high ledges.
>
  Then tell me about this bane, which burns like a cold fire in me, devouring me as a fire devours the forest! Why have they called it the ‘hundred year death’, when its spread is so swift and wicked?

  Canker kept on playing, but between the notes Nestor could hear his sobbing. In some it’s a slow thing, the dog-Lord said, but in others - lightning fast! It’s as if it were waiting to be triggered, like a bolt in a Szgany crossbow. And in you, the bolt is shot.

  There’s nothing I can do?

  How may I advise you? Finally, Canker stopped playing. His great wolf’s eyes were wild, wet, red; his muzzle quivered with some strange emotion. What words can I say? When my father knew the end was close, he shagged his bitches one by one, saddled a flyer and made for the sun. Myself: I shall head for the moon, to do battle with its puny priests for the love of its maidens! But you … you’re you, Nestor, and I may not advise you! Maybe you’ll be killed anyway, in the bloodwar.

  But out on the gulf of air, Nestor shook his head. If I’m to die, it’ll be my way.

  Oh?

  All of this stems from one act, one deed, one betrayal.

  That old itch on Sunside?

  The same.

  Your Great Enemy?

  My brother, aye. He comes and goes. He was … even here!

  What? Canker came to the rim of the bay and leaned out. In Madmanse, Nestor told him. The gas-beasts and methane chambers. That was him.

  And in Guilesump? (The dog-Lord had considered the possibility that that might have been an effect of Nestor; but if the necromancer said it wasn’t, then it wasn’t.)

  Of course he was in Guilesump! I burned the leper colony on Sunside; what happened in Guilesump was his reply! I cannot be mistaken … I have felt his numbers … he … he comes and goes! Everything that has happened to me - all that is wrong in my life - I can trace it back to him. And Canker, he knows everything! About me! More, far more, than I do! I have to kill him, my blood brother, and question him with my necromancy, so that I too may know … everything!

  And again Canker thought: They call me mad! But loving Nestor Lichloathe (and .. . missing him, already?), he did his best to keep the thought to himself. So what will you do? Find him, and kill him, as I’ve said. In Sunside?

  Nestor nodded. He has a day to live — or I have. Your own brother? Your blood brother? He was my brother. Now, I’m Wamphyri. And he is my Great Enemy.

  For a moment, a great wave of sadness washed out from the dog-Lord on the rim of the landing-bay. Then a second wash … of pain! His ear! His aching head! The thing that ate into his brain! It, too, came and went.. .

  And as Canker slapped at the side of his head, Nestor said: We’re a mess, you and I!

  Aye, Canker agreed. But you are right: it’s as well to end things as they have been, to die as we have lived. All my life I have worshipped my silver mistress moon. Now I’ll go to her, and join the great ranks of wild wolves and dogs and foxes gone before me. You have loathed for long and long, which is a disease in itself! Well, at least that’s something you can cure! I wish you good hunting.

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  r

  Nestor said no more, for there was nothing more to say. He reined back, sought a rising thermal, and went up and up, into Suckscar. And in a little while, from below, the sounds of the dog-Lord’s moon music sounded again . ..

  Wratha had eavesdropped on all they’d said.

  Initially their thoughts had been ‘loud’ to compensate for Canker’s music, but they’d both appreciated the danger in that. After a while, however, they hadn’t much cared. A sad conversation between genuine friends. Apart from Devetaki (and that a long time ago), Wratha had never had a friend. In a way she was jealous of the situation, while in another she was afraid of it. It might even seem to defy logic — except her Wamphyri ‘logic’ had already defined it: as the loyalty that a dog gives to his man. But Canker was only part-dog and all Wamphyri, wherefore his own safety had been paramount; finally he had wavered and built his wall.

  Now that she knew the whole truth, Wratha was surprised to discover so little of anger in herself; not towards Nestor, anyway. And wryly she queried the logic of that, too. What was it, then: the boundless ‘love’ that exists between a bitch and her man? Scarcely! But even lacking the human ability to understand it, at least she could appreciate the facts in the case: that as soon as Nestor was sure of his condition, he’d stopped seeing her. And he had been careful to keep himself apart from all of the others, too. Unlike some Wratha could name (if they had been in his shoes), the necromancer had not deliberately tried to spread his curse abroad.

  As for this Great Enemy of his - well, and perhaps even in this he was right! ‘Weird warfare’, Gorvi had called it. A ‘special talent’, according to Nestor: of a man who could move instantly from one place to another, even miles apart, without covering the distance between! How else might one explain the damage to a Madmanse landing-bay, or a leprous cadaver in Gorvi’s wells? (Or a man thrust from the rim of a mighty boulder to his death, whom Nestor claimed was still alive?)

  So maybe Wratha wouldn’t kill Lord Lichloathe after all. If this Great Enemy of his was real, perhaps Nestor should be allowed to deal with him in his own fashion — and at the same time perform a great service for Wrathstack. Anyway, there was enough dissension in the aerie as it was; and what would Wratha’s excuse be if she did kill Nestor? And what if his condition should be seen before she could dispose of his corpse? It was general knowledge that they’d been lovers.

  She remembered a legend of old Turgosheim, the story of Lord Kalk Ingrison. Kalk had been shunned as a leper for more than one hundred and forty years, and for that same period of time had used his amazing metamorphism to hold the disease at bay! For Kalk, the blood really was the life: he had required it by the gallon, to fuel his metamorphism! But following the introduction of an early form of the tithe system, his plasma intake had been so reduced that it was the end of him. In the space of a single night he’d withered to a husk and crumbled into pieces - and his very leech had been discovered riddled with leprosy!

  Ah, but he had survived for a hundred and forty years! And if Kalk Ingrison could do it, so could Wratha. Except, first she must survive a bloodwar. Well, only time would tell about that. As for Nestor: if he survived his rendezvous with this nameless enemy, his so-called ‘blood brother’…

  .. . But that, too, must be left to fate and time.

  As for now: Wratha could hear the sighing of the sun even through a thousand miles of planet’s rock, and she was certain that the southern sky was lightening by the minute. If she was to be strong enough to repel the invaders out of the east, she must have rest; likewise her leech, in order to find strength to defend her from the thing in her blood.

  She took to her bed, where she tossed and turned for long and long, aware of all the evil of forgotten millenia. It was in the very rock: a cement of horror that held the last aerie erect against gravity, time, and all the immemorial hatred of

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  Sunside’s Szgany. But for how much longer? The dog-Lord’s predictions seemed ominous. An end to all this? Well, forewarned is forearmed.

  But how may one forearm oneself against the Very End?

  Or was the knowledge simply there to be used as a last resort (a last chance for glory, perhaps?) by someone wise enough to accept its inevitability? Once again, only time would tell…

  Uppermost in Turkur Tzonov’s mazed mind was a memory so monstrous it could only be a nightmare; a bad dream which might yet be in progress. He remembered …

  … A place of dusty gloom and creeping, jewel-eyed evil. Held down by men with the strength of giants, and watched over by a woman with eyes red as a desert sunset, he’d suffered the bites - a great many bites - of creatures he could no longer bear to think about! And all of this in addition to the agony, indeed the delirium of pain, from his torn body.

  Since when, this dreary, bleary malaise — this sini
ster state of being, of body and mind — from which, try as he might, he could not raise himself up. He floated, light as a feather, yet heavy as lead, in a material void whose only substance was the disjointed, fuzzy imagery of his own mind. Or rather, such had been its substance, until recently someone else’s mind had impinged.

  In itself this wasn’t strange. Tzonov was a telepath; he had experienced the thoughts of others; they were usually accompanied by fear - great fear - of himself! Yet now, he was the one who was afraid.

  He had thought it was the darkness, for the unknown dark is a fearsome place. But the owner of the curiously naive yet intrusive mind had lit a candle - following which she’d been a stranger no longer! For then, looking into eyes that bored into his own like crimson drills (this despite that he seemed to meet their gaze through a misted window), Tzonov’s telepathy, if very little else, had sprung alive! At

  which the oddly deficient yet malevolent and vindictive mind behind the crimson eyes had at once made itself known —

  - As that of Siggi Dam!

  And everything had come flooding back, to fill the dull unfeeling void with unbearable truth: the truth of his situation. But only the incomplete truth, as he understood it:

  That he’d been poisoned by the paralysing bite of great spiders, and was now in a weird half-comatose condition, cocooned and stored by those same creatures against an uncertain future, a time of need when he would become … their food?

  And at that precise moment, as suddenly Tzonov knew that this was not a nightmare but a reality, the here and now: Ah, no! Siggi told him, smiling like a shark to display her white needle teeth and scarlet gums. Not their food, Turkur - but nourishment for their young!

  Their … their young? The thought floated out from his frozen brain encased in ice.

  And in return she sent him an even colder picture, which showed him exactly how it was, and how it would be …

  Then, as his mental screaming commenced, and went on and on, climbing ever higher along the scales of madness, the Lady Siggi snuffed the candle and floated away into darkness, leaving him with this one last thought: